A Brief History

The project entails repairing the building at 335 Maplewood Ave in a manner that meets both preservation and sustainability goals. The building is the new location for Petersen Engineering, a firm that has been located in Portsmouth since 1992, and specializes in sustainable building engineering. We intend for this project to showcase techniques & materials that promote both preservation and sustainability and intend to share all aspects of the project locally and regionally through open houses, presentations, industry tradeshows, case studies and publications. We foresee this project being a valuable educational tool to demonstrate that preservation goals need not be compromised by sustainability goals. We have teamed with Bruss Construction who we know from past collaborations has exceptional experience and expertise on projects with the dual goal of preservation and sustainability.

The project received approval by the Historic District Commission on January 6, 2010 with construction scheduled to begin early February 2010.

The projected peak heat loss reduction is 85%.


Thursday, February 4, 2010

Brace for jacking!!!

In order to replace the sills, we need to literally pick the house up to make the switch. The Bruss team is almost done preparing to jack up the first corner of the building tomorrow morning. See the photos below:


Photo: Michael Bruss inspecting the bracing.


Photo: How the bracing meets the second floor structure. (The only other alternative to the jacking up the second floor structure is jacking up the posts. Michael's years of experience led him to believe that this is the best fit for this project (and we believe him). The "dangling" first floor studs below have been screwed into the second floor beam so that when the beam goes up, they go up.)


Photo: The jack. (When they are done jacking up, they will nail a 2x4 horizontally across the two sloped pieces of wood seen to hold them in place and provide additional support.)


Photo: First floor structure support.
(This floor is staying put while everything else is going up. The sill that these floor joists currently rest on is being taken away so we needed something to temporarily hold the floor up while the sill is replaced.)
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